La Vila del Joy is an early music festival that offers high-quality musical experiences in one of the best-preserved Renaissance temples in the Valencian Mediterranean, the Church-Fortress of the Assumption in La Vila Joiosa. In this edition, we are presenting five concerts and two lectures on consecutive days from September 24 to October 9. Soloists and ensembles of the highest quality and international renown give us the privilege of traveling through Renaissance polyphony, Italian Seicento madrigals, and the great composers of the late European Baroque, all performed with period-appropriate criteria and instruments. And to provide context for some of the repertoire, we will add three lectures at the local university branch of the University of Alicante. 

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The opening of the festival will take place on THURSDAY, September 24, with a program dedicated to John Dowland, whose 400th death anniversary is being commemorated this year, featuring a lute program performed by one of the best lutenists in the world, like the Sevillian Miguel Rincón. The melancholic spirit that permeates Dowland's music is deeply connected to English Renaissance poetry, refinement, introspection, and spiritual depth. Miguel Rincón is now one of the most highly regarded lutenists on the international scene, as shown by his repeated collaborations with singers like Philippe Jaroussky, Cecilia Bartoli, Joyce Di Donato, and conductors like René Jacobs, Diego Fasolis, or Enrico Onofri.

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The next concert will be on SATURDAY, September 26, where we will be lucky to enjoy the voice of soprano Núria Rial, accompanied by the festival's usual group Vespres d’Arnadí. In this concert, they will perform the program “Gardens of the Soul,” which we will explore through the music of Johann Sebastian Bach and other related German composers, such as his predecessor Johann Christoph Erlebach and contemporaries Georg Philipp Telemann and Christoph Graupner.

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The Italian group Orfeo Futuro will star in two concerts, the first one on FRIDAY, October 2nd, together with soprano Cristina Fanelli, with the program La Tartaruca centered around arias and sonatas on the chaconne, a slow-paced dance with a repeating bass that was danced in the 16th and 17th centuries, featuring works by Marco Ucellini, Barbara Strozzi, Maurizio Cazzati, and especially Claudio Monteverdi.

The next day, SATURDAY, October 3rd, the same group Orfeo Futuro will accompany countertenor Alessandro Giangrande presenting “Ti amo allà follia,” which could be translated as “I love you madly.” This concert includes a selection of 17th-century Italian vocal and instrumental pieces dedicated to themes of love, passion, irony, and melancholy. Alongside beautiful works by Benedetto Ferrari, Falconiero, and Buonamente, the program highlights repertoires like Simone Coya’s serenade and the popular song "Tu bella ca lu trattene." A musical journey between affection and the madness of Love that moves between culture and folklore, between words and dance.

At the closing concert on FRIDAY, October 9, the vocal group Qvinta Essençia, together with Lucentum XVI, will close the cycle by performing John Dowland again, but in a very different version from Miguel Rincón's in the festival's first concert. Here, some of the composer's most emblematic works will be presented in a polyphonic version with the rich diversity of four voices and various Renaissance wind and percussion instruments. 

Parallel activities at the festival will include two lectures in collaboration with the University of Alicante’s University Hall in Vila Joiosa, the Vilamuseu museum, and the Vila Joiosa City Council. The first will take place on THURSDAY, September 24, and will be dedicated to composer John Dowland, led by Doctor Manuel de Lara Ruiz. The second will be on FRIDAY, October 2, led by Pierfrancesco Borrelli and Pere Saragossa Galvany, and will focus on Renaissance and Baroque music at the courts of Naples and Valencia